In U.S. Pat. No. 4,811,735, entitled Stone Destroying Catheter and Method of Use, and in a copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/322,754, filed on Mar. 13, 1989, entitled Stone Pulverizing Apparatus with Improved Working Head and Method of Use, both of which are assigned to the same assignee as this invention, and whose disclosures are incorporated by reference herein, there are disclosed and claimed apparatus and methods for destroying stones with minimum invasion of the body. Thus, such devices and methods of use for performing a cholecystotomy entail the percutaneous introduction of an instrument, e.g., a catheter, into the gall bladder. The catheter includes a rotatable working head having extendable blades. The head is rotated at a high rate of speed about the longitudinal axis of the catheter. This action creates a vortex flow in the liquid within the gall bladder to carry the stones into engagement with the blades of the working head, whereupon the stones are repeatedly impacted and pulverized.
As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art it is frequently desirable to perform a cholecystotomy, i.e., removal of the gall bladder, to thereby prevent the reformation of such stones. Thus, when the apparatus and methods of the aforementioned patent and patent application are used to perform a percutaneous cholecystotomy, it may also be desirable to remove or render inoperative the patient's gall bladder. Since the apparatus and methods of the aforementioned patent and patent application effect stone destruction with minimum invasion of the patient's body, by virtue of the percutaneous insertion and operation of the small diameter catheter it would be counterproductive to perform a cholecystotomy using conventional surgical techniques. By sclerosing or denuding the mucosa (inner lining) of the gall bladder with some minimally invasive procedure, the gall bladder will shrink and/or become necrotic and be absorbed by the patient's body thereby achieving the end result of a conventional surgical cholecystotomy without surgery.